Chock Lopez is a boarder at the west side Vancouver private school, headed into grade 12. He’s also now an international rugby player for Mexico.

Before you ask – no, Mexico is not a rugby power. Far from it.

“Most of [my friends] think I have the right physique to play the spot but other think that I’m crazy because it’s a ‘dangerous’ sport but don’t know what the sport is about,” Lopez messaged The Province from the NACRA U-19 Championships, currently ongoing in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.

“Everything is so nice over here! The weather is beautiful and the teams are extremely competitive this year,” he said.

Lopez first arrived at St. George’s in grade 9 and was immediately tabbed by the rugby coaches as an athlete with potential.

“As soon as I got to Vancouver, the first thing that my teacher Bill Chamberlain said was ‘you’re playing rugby no matter what,” he said.

Because he arrived half way through the school term, Lopez was placed up with the grade 10 group and even though he’d never played rugby before – he’d played some high school gridiron in Mexico – he became a strong player on a team filled with boys a year older.

“He’s a big body that can move,” Chamberlain said.

The native of Leon, a city in the centre of Mexico, has developed into a key player for the senior Saints squad, which won the provincial AAA boys title this year, knocking off powerhouse Shawnigan Lake. His family, which owns a number of small businesses, nearly sent him to Shawnigan, he said.

“Then I talked to my dad and he told me that there was a school in Vancouver called ‘Saints’ and there around the same level,” he said. “The good thing was that it was in the city and there was more stuff to do.”

“I came to Canada because I wanted a better lifestyle.”

Seeing Lopez succeed on the international stage as both an athlete and a leader is making Chamberlain beam with pride.

“It was a great physical game,” he said. “At the end were were a more dominant force.”

“Coaches say this is the strongest team Mexico has ever had. Lots of experienced players in the back line,” he said. Alongside Lopez are two Shawnigan Lake players: Lopez’s stepbrother Alejandro Barron, playing fly half, and young Patricio Falcon, who is along for the experience.

On his return to Vancouver at the end of the summer, Lopez has two targets in mind: keep improving at rugby and also get into UBC.

“I see rugby as a priority,” he said. “I think I have a future if I keep playing and training but if I want to play at a higher level then I have to work way harder than I do now.”

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